Research about two types of animation (creating digital animation assignment 1)

Digital animation is the process of using a computer to put together objects in different motions to create an illusion of movement. Animation is divided into two parts know as 3D and 2D. The 2D is an animation which has two dimensions whiles the 3D is animation with three dimensions. The 2D animations are flat but the 3D looks real. There are also different types of animations such as;

• Computer generated animation (CGI); computer generated animation is using a computer to create images of an object in different motions and putting them together to create the illusion of movement.
• Flip book; flip book animation artist draws a character in continues  motion on deferent pages of a book and flip through it quickly to create an illusion of movement.
• Stop motion; stop motion is taking pictures of a person or an object in different motions and putting together all the pictures in other to create an illusion of movement of the object.  

Animation is used by different people and for different purposes or reasons. Animation can be used in;

• Education, animation is mainly used in teaching little children. Children like very colourful pictures and videos. If you teach them with too many words, they will get bored and will not be able to understand you but if you make all the information into an animated video/cartoons or slide they will easily understand it.

• Entertainment: some big entertainment industries such as nickelodeon make animated video for children to watch and even some adults as well. Animation is also used in the entertainment industry by movie makers to add some effects to movies to make it interesting and also add animations to some scenes to make it look realistic.

•   Advertisement: animation is a very important feature in advertisement. Many big companies use animation to attract people to visit their website. Game creators also make very attractive animation to attract people to download or buy and play their games. Some people even visit some sites just to watch their adverts. Without animation adverts will be very boring, no one will like to watch it and it will also attract just a few people or even no one.

• Animation is also used for science projects; scientist use animation to imagine or get an idea of something they do not have at hand. For example, scientist can use animation to create a visual representation of how space looks like to help them understand what they are studying. Study proves it that it easier to understand something when it is in visuals or is represented visually.

Seedling

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNoAwLAxArg

What is it about?

This an animation which made mainly to entertain the viewers and it also a little emotional. The animation is about a creature that grew out of a flower, when the creature was moving about in the forest, it saw another terrifying creature killing one of his king so while he was trying to escape he fell from a hill and dies. At the end of the video he grew into another flower. This animation has lots of bright colours and is mainly directed toward children.

Features of the animation

In this animation, there were lots of effects in use. Some of these are;

• Zoom: zoom is when the camera makes the object bigger or makes the object look closer to the camera. At the beginning of this animation, the camera zoomed in to the flower from which the main character (creature) grew out from. By doing this, it makes the viewers get an idea that the animation is drawing their attention to something.

• Blur; blare is an effect most animation have in common. Blur is when an object in the scene is clear and all other things around it are made unclear. When this is done, it draws the viewer’s attention to the main thing the animation is trying to let them look at. The blur animation mostly used in scenes where the creator  of the animation wants you to really focus on what is going on.

• Music: the animation has really nice music playing throughout the video. When something is about to happen, a dramatic song plays which makes the viewers know that something bad is about to happen. The music also helps to make the animation more interesting to watch and rather not boring. The dramatic music that also plays keeps the viewers in suspense of what will happen next.

• Fade: fade is when the screen is black or white and begins to move to bring out an object bit by bit, from being blare and eventually becomes clear. This a very beautiful effect most animation use at the beginning of the animation or when the scene is changing. At the beginning of this animation, it faded from black till it brought out the first scene. This type of fade is usually termed as dip to black.

• Shadow; shadow is when there is a reflection of an object on the ground or on another object. The shadow effect is normally added to animation to make it look very real. In this animation there was little of the shadow effect in it. 

Is it fit for purpose?

The main of this animation is entertainment. I will say it was very fit for its purpose. This is because, it had a very good story line, the story keeps the viewers in suspends which makes you want to watch it. The story also had very nice sound effects that is really good for entertaining viewers. The story also had a very happy ending which is what most viewers like to see. The animation also makes you scared of what will happen which will not happen to you. this makes it feel realistic and gets the viewers involved in it.  

Strengths

This was a great animation. It had some good effects that made it stand out from most animations. These are some things that make it very good;

• There were some very good sound effects added to this animation which made it good. There were sounds of thing moving around, things falling, when the creature was running it had some sound effects that made it sound very real. Apart from this the dramatic sounds added to the animation made it mind engaging and interesting.
• Another strength of this animation was the suspense. The creator of this animation had a very good script. Unlike other animation where you can predict everything that was going to happen, you could not predict what was going to happen next. This makes people want to watch it more. This is a very good way of making people watch the whole animation.

Weaknesses

just like every other animation, no matter how good the animation may be, it still has some weaknesses or some things that could be done differently to make it better. This animation had some weaknesses, some of which are;

• Characters not talking; this animation had a good story line and also some good sound effects. The problem was that the characters in the animation were not speaking. The story line of this animation was a little difficult to understand because the characters were not speaking. Which means that you need to pay rapid attention to be able to understand the animation which most people will not like to do. Most people watch animation to relax their minds. This makes it boring to watch.
• Unstable sound; the sound of an animation an important factor that contributes to making it interesting. This animation had some good sounds but the sound level was unstable. The animation at some point had the sound very low and at some point the sound rises very high. This means, the viewer will have to increase the volume when the sound goes low and will have to decrease the volume when the sound goes high. They will have to do this throughout the video which most people including myself will not enjoy doing. This problem will draw many people away from watching this animation.

Second animation

SOLDIER 76

URL; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQioaxeMUA

What is it about

This a funny animation about a character who was learning how to shoot a gun. In this animation the character was a soldier who was learning how to shoot and ended up shooting all his friends and in the end he shot a jet which fell on him and killed him as well. This is a three dimension(3d) animation.

Is it fit for purpose?

The main purpose of this animation is to entertain its viewers. I will say it was very fit for its purpose because the concept of the animation was very funny. This animation could have been an emotional animation but the way the characters were speaking made it very funny. The background music also made the animation more entertaining. The purpose of this animation could also be to showcase the talent of the creator. This is because the animation was very good, organized and very understandable. The characters of the animation also looked nice.

Features of the animation

Blare background or focus; this when the camera focuses more on one objects and blurs everything else. This normally used when the creator wants to draw your attention to something and does not want viewers to be distracted. In this animation, when the main character is talking or is in action, the camera blurs everything else and focuses on the main character.

Sound effects; sound effects contributes greatly in making animation sound real. Sound effects are the sounds added to animations such as the sound of moving wind, gun shots, dropping objects and more. In this animation the was sound effects for the gun shots, sound effects was also used when the jet was falling. This really made the animation sound real and interesting.

Background music; background music is the music that plays in the background in animations. Background music are usually chosen in relation to the type of scene, for example dramatic, romantic or even horror. In this animation, I noticed two different background sounds. When the shooting was going on, the background music was very dramatic and made it feel as if you are in the scene. When the man was proposing to the girl, there was also a very romantic background which made the scene emotional.

Panning; this is when the camera moves from left to right, right to left , top to bottom or from the bottom to the top. This is done to move from one object or character to the other. In this animation, when one character stops finish speaking and another character beside him starts to speak, the camera pans to the direction of the character that is currently speaking. This feature makes the animation look lively and real.

Zoom in; zoom in when the camera gets closer to a character or an object. This is done when the creator of the animation wants to get your full attention to something going on.

Strengths of the animation

This animation is a very good a example of an interesting animation. It had lots of features that made it a great animation. Some of these are;

Sound; in this animation, unlike a lot of animations out there, the characters in it were speaking. When the characters in an animation speak, it makes it  easier for viewers to understand what the animation is about. When the characters speak in an animation, it also makes it more realistic and interesting.

Interesting story line; this animation had a very interesting story line. The story behind the animation was interesting, funny and easy to understand. The main purpose of this animation is to entertain and I will say it is really entertaining because it was funny and had lots of suspense that makes viewers want to know what will happen next.

Weaknesses

Lack of brightness; the animation had some interesting colours but the animation in a whole was very deem. The colours were not very visible which made the animation a little boring. The colour brightness of the animation could have been a little brighter and better.

Loud background music; animation become more interesting if they have some background music in them. I personally say background music really defines moments in the animation. The background music in this animation was even louder than the voice of the characters. This is bad because the main sound should be the voice of the characters and the background music should just play softly in the background. If it louder than the voice of the main characters, it makes it difficult for viewers to hear what the characters say.